Drop Zone
by Shinobi of the Onyx Sands
Summary: An ODST is asked by ONI to show them what they saw during the war after the ceasefire. The story follows them through the war with the Covenant and finds them solving a puzzle about themselves and one of their teammates. M for violence and language


I've always hated that smell. It's the smell of a fresh Drop Pod waiting for me to get into it so I can do an orbital drop with my squad. I'm an ODST, an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. I was a rookie at the start of the war. Now, I command my own squad. My first day on the job was at during the fight of Installation 04, or the first Halo ring world. I saw my squad die at the hands of Elites and Jackals and thought I was dead myself until I saw a SPARTAN. He saved all of our asses and I got myself to a Pelican that got us off Halo before it exploded. My squad knows me as 'Sir', to my friends I'm known as Ash, and to the UNSC I am Master Sergeant Ashley Royal, serial number AR9837465. To the rest of the world, I'm just a Helljumper.

"Before I show any of you ONI spooks what my helmet cam shows, I'm going to warn you all. This is war that is going to be in your face and none of you are going to like it. Sure you've seen the films the SPARTANs brought back earlier on but you guys never seem to take an interest in the normal Marines or the ODSTs cams. So, I'm wondering why all of this for just me. I'm not exactly a special person. I only just made Master Sergeant at the end of the war. "

The room becomes deadly quiet as the ODST stands there. Her helmet sits on the table in front of her, waiting to be used once again. It's the helmet she got upon graduating from basic training and the paint shows the wear and tear it's been through over the years.

"Oh, so we're going to play the silent game then. I get it. Just shut up and do what the higher ups asked you to do. That's what the Gunney used to say. Got a video jack for this? I don't exactly feel like taking my helmet apart just to find the video chip; I might need it tomorrow. Word has it you boys are sending my squad out to do a little recon and rescue. Not that you'll give us any specifics on what we're looking for or going to be saving."

Her tone is one that many UNSC soldiers have toward ONI Section 3. They don't trust them but everyone knew that without these guys, everyone would be dead or worse. As the ODST puts the video cord into her helmet the screen in the middle of the table flickers to life. The various people around the table all seem to tense up a little. The video rewinds through its memory and goes back to the first thing Ash ever recorded on it.

"Move your ass rookie. Get into that pod before the shit hits the fan any harder."

The voice came from her team commander; her IFF tag system marked him as Staff Sergeant Lucas. As the helmet cam panned around the room, seven other ODSTs were seen getting into pods, including her squad commander, Gunnery Sergeant Nikolai.

The built in functions of the VISR system made ODST helmets the second most advanced military helmet after the MJOLNIR Mark IV. It also gave out very detailed information about everything around Ash. She climbed into the Drop Pod that was marked for her and strapped in. It was obvious from the footage how much she hated getting into one of those things. Some ODSTs were known to jokingly call them "death pods".

She felt her nose crinkle at the smell of the pod. To her the smell of metal and rocket fuel always made her feel sick to her stomach and she hated the smell. One of her fellow squad members walked over and gave her a hard slap on the ass. "It ain't gonna bite Rookie. Once you're in it there's nothin' to it. It's just like riding a bike a terminal velocity through atmospheric re-entry. You'll love it."

She looked at the person speaking and her VISR identified him as Corporal Luis Moers. She was glad her service tag showed her name as Ash. Enough bullying for wanting to be one of the very few female ODSTs had made her purposely chose her tag to read what it did. If her teammates ever learned that she was female, she would never hear the end of it.

She gave Moers a slight nod as he walked back over to his pod shaking his head, muttering "Rookies." She ignored his comment and got into her pod. She knew this was her first hot drop. She had been assigned to the UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn as it left Reach. She had missed the action that the Winter Contingency protocol had been called for but seeing vids of Reach from those that had seen it on the bridge made her glad she had stayed out of that fight. Even with a SPARTAN team there, Reach was still falling to the Covenant.

She gripped the control sticks of her pod and tried to slow her breathing and relax. The order to drop was going to come any minute and she knew that she had to be prepared for this. Fighting the Covenant on an entirely alien world to both sides of the war was something no one had expected. No one knew how the fight was going to go.

The ship alarms were going crazy as the Covenant pounded the Pillar of Autumn to pieces. The order to drop was barely audible over the loud explosion that rocked the drop pod bay. Half the ODST pods dropped early as they were shaken out of their housings. Ash's pod was among those knocked loose. Ash felt her pod spin in free fall for a moment before she regained control of it. She had no comms at all and her helmet was just a wall of static as her pod plummeted toward the surface of the mysterious ring world.

All Ash wanted to do now was just land safely and worry about where she and her team were later. She wrestled with the pod as it tried to spin and rotate under her without control. The light that told her to deploy the chute and air brakes came on and Ash hit the controls for them, making her pod rock violently as she did. After the pod started to slow and the brakes finished their work, she felt them disengage with a muted thud. That was her signal to hit the rockets that would keep her from slamming into the ground and turning into a missile.

The moment she hit the rockets she felt something was off. The world around her spun as she heard the pod contacting a high slope, sending her careening through the air with no way to regain control. Ash took a big deep breath and prayed quietly. She felt a bit annoyed that her first combat drop was the one that killed her. Another big impact knocked her out cold and the world was lost to her.

A few hours later the only sound she can hear is the warning alarms of the pod and the sound of her armor integrity and health warning noises. She blinked and groaned as she blinked to clear her vision. Everything hurt, but Ash was glad to just be alive after that landing. She hit the release pins and the door popped out and went sailing. She grunted in pain as she sat up to look out of the pod. She breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed she wasn't on the side of a cliff or in the ocean. She had landed sideways on the side of a hill.

Taking a moment to make sure nothing was broken, Ash looked around. She was glad the only things that seemed to really be bothering her were the rather large bruises that were going to hurt for days. She got out and grabbed her equipment. A pistol and a DMR were the weapons she had grown accustomed to on Reach and had asked for one in lieu of a MA5B Assault Rifle. She knew that once the ammo in her DMR was gone she would be screwed unless there was something she could pick up. The first thing she made sure of after her weapons check was to grab as much extra ammo as she could. She had put forty boxes of DMR and Pistol ammo in her pod before drop and was glad she had. Everyone had pointed out that it was just 'A rookie overestimating how much ammo they would need' or how bad a shot they must be.

She grabbed every last bit of ammo she could find, stuffing the magazines into every pocket she had. Once she was all set, she looked around at her surroundings. She could see that the only thing around her for a good ways was just open fields with only sporadic cover. It would suck if she had to get into a firefight, but she could see that wouldn't happen.

She sighed and tried her radio to see if she could get anything. She found the internal control and tapped it with her chin. The only thing she could hear was static. Ash swore and readied herself for a good long hike. She needed elevation to see if there were any structures nearby. As she started to move, she started to see lifeboats coming in hotter than the ODST pods normally did. She had a feeling that there were going to be a lot of deaths in this place.

An hour after she left her pod, Ash was on top of the hill she had crashed on. She looked around and was glad to see a structure nearby. It would take her a few hours to get over to the place but she had nowhere else to go and right now, it was her only option. She let out another sigh and quietly said, "Ashley, what in hell did you get yourself into?"

She kept her footsteps quiet even though she could see nothing but open grassland and sky all around her. For all she knew there could be Jackals hiding behind one of the many low hills covering the field. She held her weapon off to her side but made sure it was ready to go the instant she needed it. That instant looked like it was going to come a lot sooner than she wanted it to as she saw a Covenant drop ship slowly cruise by overhead and head toward her destination where she assumed they were dropping off Grunts and Jackals. Hopefully there would be no Elites or Hunters in the mix. She settled her gear and moved over to the structure a bit faster so she wouldn't be seen out in the fields in case there were snipers. Needle Rifles were far too accurate in the right hands and Ash hated the idea of being shot by one of those pink needles. She had seen what they could do to fellow soldiers on Reach as she helped evacuate the medical station where she had been put temporarily to await her new assignment.

She dropped to a crouching stance as she approached the structure and used the scope on her DMR to investigate what was there. All she could see were a few Jackals and about forty Grunts doing a standard patrol of the area. No sign of any Elites or Hunters which was good. She moved into range and set up a small area to fire from. This would have been easier if she had packed a sniper rifle but she knew the DMR was good at this range. She aimed at her first target and let the round go. It hit the Grunt she was aiming for square in the face, dropping it where it stood. The unfortunate side effect of her shot was that the remaining Grunts flew into a panic and the Jackals were put on high alert. Even amid the confusion of the Grunts, Ashley's next ten shots all found targets, dropping a handful of Grunts and four of the ten Jackals.

She thought calmly as she took her time between shots. She knew that she had to get to that building if she wanted to find some better cover than what this field provided. The problem was, to take the building; she had to take out all of the Covenant guarding it. She picked off three more Jackals and another good handful of Grunts. She had burned through two clips of ammo already, and as she put in her third, she moved in closer.

There remained about fifteen Grunts and three Jackals. Ash took a moment to check all of her gear. Everything was loaded and she had three grenades that she was going to save in case she needed them. She rushed in on her targets and swiftly took care of them, killing the last Grunt by burying her combat knife into its skull.

She policed the Grunts for Covenant plasma grenades. They were amazing little explosives that stuck on contact with just about any surface, including skin, once activated. A similar Covenant Grenade had been seen but no UNSC Marine had gotten their hands on one. SPARTANS were rumored to call them Spike Grenades. ODSTs jokingly called the things 'Spikers' after a Brute weapon that also shared the name and spiked projectiles.

Ash leaned against a wall and sat down for a moment to gain her breath back after the little skirmish. She double checked all her ammo and supplies and started to set up a little bunker as best she could. She hated to admit it to herself, but she had a feeling that she was going to be stuck in this place for a while. She took off her helmet for a moment after running a check to see if the air was fine.

She muttered to herself as she cleaned her visor. 'Fucking Grunts got my helmet dirty. I can't believe it. I'm stuck on this godforsaken rock in the middle of nowhere." And she added in a yell of frustration, "And this world fucking sucks ass! It should all be blown to hell and back!"

A voice from behind her said, "I could arrange that, but we would have to find some really big bombs first." He jumped down from a ledge nearby and walked over to Ash. "Good to see you're still kicking rookie. Surprised to see you're a girl though. Not too many chicks in the ODSTs."

Ash put her helmet back on and triggered her VISR system as she looked at the ODST standing there. It tagged him as PFC Donnellson. She was surprised to see another ODST so soon. She had figured she was the only one for miles from her drop group.

He cleared the opaque covering from his visor and asked, "You have a rough ride in too? Hope you didn't have to use a shotgun to open your pod. Those things are loud in small spaces."

Ash laughed and said, "Try having a grenade go off two feet from you and taking out your training helmet when you're in a bunker. Now _that_ is loud." She paused and said, "My pod is about two clicks that way. You wouldn't happen to know where anyone else is would you?"

Donnellson shook his head. "Radio is about as dead as those Grunts over there. It's useless. We either have to hole up here and pray the rest of them come along or do the crazy thing and walk out in the open, risk Covenant detection and our lives trying to find the rest of everyone."

Ash smiled in her helmet and said, "I like the way you think Donnellson. Let's do the crazy option. It beats sitting here and twiddling our thumbs for a few days."

Donnellson sounded almost giddy as he replied, "Hell yes ma'am. Let's saddle up and kick this out in style."

They took an hour to look over their supplies. Donnellson had the UNSC standard shotgun with enough shells to last them a good long while before they ran out. He also had an Assault Rifle and was using a hip holster to carry a pistol as well. Ammo wasn't their immediate concern which was good. For now they could focus on getting back to their team.

As they headed out, both of them knew that it was going to be a very, very long day and neither one of them complained about it.

(Author's note: Well, this is something I've wanted to do for a long while but never really had the time to up and write. Halo is one of my favorite series and I've always liked the perspective of the war from the view of an ODST. I'd be lying if I said that this won't alienate fans of my other stuff as this is totally different but at the same time, I think some of my regular readers might enjoy it, if only for the change of pace from my usual genre of yuri and romance. I hope you all like it. As always, Read and Enjoy)

**Chie Asakura** (side note: It feels really weird signing this as something other than Shinobi of the Onyx Sands after using that name for so long.)


End file.
